Month: November 2012

Posted on

Why I Haven’t Upgraded to iBooks Author 2.0

Note: Since I first publishing this post, I took the leap and updated to iBA 2.0. (Of course, I had to because iTunes only accepts new books created in iBA 2.) I published three books in the new software and was also able to successfully open iBA 1.0 files in 2.0 and even copy widgets and other content from 1.0 to 2.0.

Over the last few months I’ve been blogging regularly about my iBooks Author (iBA) learning curve and the production of my first iBook. Along the way I have come to rely on the advice of Dr. Frank Lowney Projects Coordinator, Digital Innovation Group @ Georgia College.

BTW – Frank published The Coming ePublishing Revolution in Higher Education on iTunes. It’s an insightful guide to etextbook revolution – winners, losers, and the factors that will determine the outcome. (67 pages, 20 graphics, 28 media files, 25 video files and 5 interactive widgets.) A bargain at only $0.99!

Frank’s been most generous with his time and advice on technical aspects of formatting videos for use in iBooks Author. Recently he contacted me about some troubling features in the new iBA 2.0 which I summarized in a post – Read This Before You Upgrade to iBooks Author 2.0. As a result of that post, I was contacted by Jay Welshofer (Apple’s Senior Product Manager for iBooks Author and Keynote) who has been working with Frank to better understand the video encoding issues with iBA 2.0.

Rather than expose my veneer of understanding of video technology, let me quote some of my correspondence with Frank so that others can benefit.

I begin with three questions I posed to Frank about iBA 2.0 video optimizer ~ Frank’s replies:
1. Does it do an acceptable job on quality? (a bit of a change from your earlier appraisal)
~ Yes, the quality is quite good if the source is good. I haven’t yet done a lot of testing with lower quality source but that’s on the todo list.

2. Does it increase file size ?
~ Absolutely. The bloat is up to three times the size of what Handbrake outputs with no appreciable difference in video quality.

3. Does it wipe out subtitle tracks
~ Every time. Alternate audio tracks and chapter tracks too. Of course, chapter tracks are not relevant to iOS video except in the Videos.app which has an interface for chapters that is separate from playback. Older versions of quicktime presented chapters as a drop down menu in the controller which lends itself to all kinds of neat pedagogical uses.

To reinforce his point Frank ran a test video conversion comparing iBA 2.0 and Handbrake and supplied a video sample of each. He writes:

Dear Peter and Jay,
I have been unable to reliably replicate my initial report where video quality was significantly lessened by the IBA media optimizer. Actually, this optimizer does a pretty good job of maintaining video quality no matter what you throw at it.

However, there is still the problem of file size bloat that started this whole line of investigation back in the IBA v1 days. As you’ll recall, IBA would reject many videos and recommend re-encoding in QuickTime Player and that would create files 2-3 times larger. This was a concern to many IBA users due to the 2 GB limit on iBooks in the iBookstore.

Back then, the workaround was to tweak the output of more efficient systems such as Handbrake such that IBA wouldn’t reject them. Now, with IBA v2, the use of QuickTime is no longer optional and the file size bloat issue is with us again. The new workaround is to use the video replacement surgery tactic that I described earlier. It’s a bit more daunting than the earlier workaround because you could break the whole iBook just by getting the name of one video file wrong, a typo for example.

As promised, I’ve constructed a hardball case documenting this issue as follows. An executive summary in the form of a screencast comparing the iBooks Author encode to the Handbrake encode will have more general interest. Here it is:

The source file came from a “pro” level HD DV camera and was provided to us as a ~16 GB DVCPRO HD file at 720p. As you can see from the video, iBooks Author encoded this as a 1.5 GB file (causing a warning about the 2 GB limit) whereas Handbrake 0.98 (Apple TV 3 preset) produced a 532 MB file, a third of what IBA produced. Also evident in the video should be the fact that there is no discernible difference in size or quality.

BTW, I used QuickTime Player 7.6 for this demo because it can play two or more videos sychronously allowing much better qualitative analysis. QuickTime X Player cannot do this.

Posted on

Animated Guide to 8 Essentials For Learning

This clever and fast-paced 6-minute animation provides insights into how teenagers learn. An “insider’s guide” to the teenage brain, it answers the question – “If you were a teenage speaker brought in to address a crowd of teachers on the subject of how you and your peers learn best . . . what would you say?”

Done in hand-drawn whiteboard / voiceover format it sets out eight essentials for learning, including my favorite – reflection. Share it with your students and see if they concur or use it as a discussion starter for your next faculty meeting.

  1. I feel okay.
  2. It matters.
  3. It’s active.
  4. It stretches me.
  5. I have a coach.
  6. I have to use it.
  7. I think back on it.
  8. I plan my next steps.

Posted on

Four Keys to Teaching Students How to Analyze

This week I’m presenting at the national AMLE conference (middle level education) in Portland Ore. Quite nice since I live here!

My session
Thursday Nov 8 at 8AM
#1111 – Teaching Students to Analyze? Motivate with Skills, Choice and Reflection.
Here’s a preview

True analysis is messy work, but that’s where the learning takes place.

My talk has two themes – first, it’s a reflection on how analysis is taught in the classroom. Too often teachers give students a Venn Diagram and ask them to compare. What looks like analysis on the surface is often no more than re-filling information from the source material into the Venn. Graphic organizer are great to help students understand a variety of analytic models, but they often constrain students into someone else’s analytic framework. 

Summarizing and comparisons are powerful ways to build content knowledge and critical thinking. But if students are going to master CCSS skills they need to design the model, find a way to express it to others, and have the opportunity self reflect on their product and feedback from peers. Get them started with graphic organizers, then show some courage and be less helpful. True analysis is messy work, but that’s where the learning takes place.

My session will utilize audience responders to first evaluate sample lessons in summarizing and comparing, then collectively develop critical benchmarks. Teachers will next be given frameworks for designing lessons which enable students to think like designers, to apply their learning strategies, share their conclusions and set the stage for self-reflection.

FlipNLearn: a foldable that students design, print and share.

Next, I will demonstrate how to meet these four keys to teaching analysis with FlipNLearn, a foldable that students design, print and share. It’s an innovative learning tool that students design on a computer, then print on special pre-formatted paper. The result – a clever foldable that flips through four faces of student selected text and images. FlipNLearn is a great way to give students a manageable design challenge that promotes teamwork, self-assessment and reflection. In 30 minutes, or less, they can produce tangible product that blends the best of PBL and CCSS skills in communication. If you can’t make my session, look for me at the IMCOM vendor booth #819 for free tips on Portland’s best pubs and grub.

Posted on

Read This Before You Upgrade to iBooks Author 2.0

Note: Since I first publishing this post, I took the leap and updated to iBA 2.0. (Of course, I had to because iTunes only accepts new books created in iBA 2.) I published three books in the new software and was also able to successfully open iBA 1.0 files in 2.0 and even copy widgets and other content from 1.0 to 2.0.

I recently published my first iBook Why We Fight: WWII and the Art of Public Persuasion.
It features over a dozen historic propaganda videos. I used iBooks Author 1.0 (iBA) to create the iBook, and with lots of advice from experts, I managed to create good quality videos of manageable file size.

Before I upgraded to iBA 2.0, I thought I’d do some research.
I’m glad I did, because it appears that the new iBA 2.0 “Media Optimization” feature has mixed reviews in video management. That early analysis comes from Dr. Frank Lowney, Projects Coordinator, Digital Innovation Group @ Georgia College. Frank spent many hours online answering my questions about importing videos into iBA 1.0 and I owe him a big thanks.

Here’s some of what Frank wrote about iBA 2.0 in his comment to a recent MacWorld review.

IBAv1 was terribly finicky about video. It rejected videos that played perfectly well in the Videos.app on iPad. The current optimization routine is an apparently a well intentioned correction of that finickiness.

… If you are writing a textbook or any kind of book containing video that requires providing soft subtitle tracks to address accessibility and other important goals or alternate audio tracks to reach a wider, multi-lingual audience, be aware that this optimizer will strip out those valuable assets without notice. Of concern to a wider group of authors is the violence done to certain videos by this “optimization” routine. Although it works quickly and does a reasonably good job on video that is already close to optimal, it wreaks havoc on video that is not. 

…The worst part is that you cannot revert to the old regime.

For more a detailed analysis see this thread in the Apple Support Communities Preventing iBooks Author Media Optimization where Frank comments: 

The optimization routine in iBooks Author 2.0 is well intentioned but the execution of those intentions is quite poor. In addition to bloating the size of your videos and, hence, your iBook, it can also degrade visual quality in dramatic fashion.
… With iBooks Author 1.x, I had figured out how to create very efficient and highly capable video that IBA will accept. This “feature” throws me and a lot of other capable people into a ditch.

I asked Frank if I can use his comments and he agreed, while noting he hasn’t had time “to do full range of tests and documentation that I prefer to do.” But his early reviews suggest that I’ll wait to upgrade. Who needs bloated files, lost subtitled tracks and poor video quality?

Read Nov 30th update

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nov 9 Update from Frank Lowney:

Peter,

As you’ll recall, the caveat was that my findings re video in IBA 2 were preliminary and, therefore, subject to revision as I conduct more rigorous tests. I may well have to eat some of those earlier words. I’m still nowhere near a definitive opinion but I did manage to do a comparison between videos submitted to IBA and what they looked like after the “optimizer” got through with them.

The way to do that is to change the suffix of an *.ibooks file to zip and then use something like the free Stuffit Expander to expand the archive and reveal its folder structure and enable examining the contents. Video files are all in /OPS/assets/media/.

So I created five new videos for my iBook, loaded them into IBA, let the optimizer have at them and then compared the file size of the originals with what I found inside the *.ibooks file. I was surprised and pleased to find that four out of five were pretty much the same as the originals in both file size and quality. The odd one was 7.6 MB in the original and 8.2 MB in the *.ibooks file which is not huge. IBA apparently jacked up the data rate a little.

Of course this was a “soft ball” since the source came out of the recently released ScreenFlow 4 using a custom settings designed to be optimal for iPad (a multi-pass encode at 1024×768 using H.264 in a MOV container). Except for changing the container from .mov to .m4v, everything was the same in the *.ibooks file: bit-rate, frame rate, height, width, etc. So if you give IBA something that it expects and respects, it does no harm.

I’ll start throwing hard balls in the coming days and we’ll see what happens.

I’m sticking to what I said about soft subtitle tracks and alternate audio tracks. These are incredibly important in an educational environment in terms of Section 508 and 504 compliance. As well, being able to offer multi-lingual access is critical to the success of on-line learning. What IBA’s “optimizer” does to them is indefensible. There seems to be a contingent at Apple who think that Closed Captions, a throwback to analog TV broadcasting, is sufficient but they are dead wrong. It relies on a binary format that can only be created by expensive and difficult to use software (go ahead and price MacCaptioner) as contrasted with SRT, ASS, etc. that anyone can create with a simple text editor.

So, for people who aren’t concerned about subtitles and alternate audio tracks, the upgrade to IBA 2.0 appears to me to be a good move. The new widgets are awesome, especially the scrolling sidebar which looks a lot like what I described in an enhancement request that I submitted. The only people for whom this is a show stopper are the folks that are prepping video for iBooks and working for institutions and corporations that simply must address these accessibility issues. Indies like you and I can ignore these issues for the time being. The stuff I do at work is another story altogether.

More later and thanks for being a great sounding board.